


Counting Bodies Like Sheep (A Perfect Circle)

by Clitler



Series: Destiel Playlist [33]
Category: Supernatural, The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Guns, King-level Violence, Knives, M/M, Murder, Retribution, Ruby's Knife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 20:03:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13418643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clitler/pseuds/Clitler
Summary: Dean and his group go after Sam and exact some righteous retribution.





	Counting Bodies Like Sheep (A Perfect Circle)

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, this took longer than I had planned.
> 
> No smut in this one, but next time.

Counting Bodies Like Sheep (A Perfect Circle)

            The last person Sam thought he’d see when he got to his apartment was Crowley.  He turned the knob, but it was locked, so he was in the process of crawling around the floor, searching for something…anything, to pick the lock, but it was dark, and the floor was damnably spotless.  He heard the lock turn, then the knob click as it was turned.  Sam turned and sat on his ass in front of his own door.

 

            “Well, hello there, Moose,” Crowley smirked, “You’re looking a little worse for wear.  Fancy a cup of tea?  Fellow who lives here keeps a well-stocked pantry.”

 

            “Crowley,” Sam growled, “Why are you here?”

 

            “Seemed like the place to _be_.  You’ve been _very_ popular.  I’m almost jealous.”  Crowley turned to walk inside.

 

            “Wait!” Sam’s shoulders slumped, and he held out his hand, “Help me up.”

 

            Crowley sighed extravagantly, “Just don’t bleed on the suit.  It’s absolute Hell finding a good dry cleaner nowadays.”  He bent to grasp Sam’s hand and pulled the much taller man up easily, much to Sam’s surprise.  Crowley must have registered Sam’s shock because he winked as he took most of Sam’s weight to help him hobble through the door.  Once inside, Crowley steered him toward the couch, kicking aside papers and broken pieces of knick-knacks.

 

            Sam fell onto the couch, grunting at a stab of pain in his side, “They do this?”

 

            “Well, it wasn’t me.  I didn’t hate your sense of style _that_ much.”

 

            “How about you find me some clothes instead of tea?”

 

            “What? You think this accent makes me Belvedere?”

 

            “Crowley,” Sam warned.

 

            “I’m going, I’m going,” Crowley flapped his hands and picked his way through the debris to the hallway, reappearing a minute later with a handful of clothes, which he set beside Sam on the couch.  “Don’t even ask me to help with the dressing, Moose.  I stopped playing with dolls when I outgrew short pants.”

 

            Sam grinned, “You used to play with dolls?”

 

            “Shut it,” Crowley groused as he made his way back to the kitchen, “or no biscuits for you.”

 

            Sam set to the monumental task of clothing his body, the horrible jumbled skin and staples along his side stopping his hand as he pulled his shirt down.  Twisting as well as he was able, Sam caught the distinctive mark of a massive incision there, precisely where something like his kidney would be located.  “Styne,” he grumbled to himself.  No wonder the man had been able to keep two of his evil progeny alive.  If immunity could ride along with an organ into the recipient’s body, he would have used Sam as his own personal organ farm.  His sons wouldn’t be able to take immunosuppressants, so they would need regular ‘refreshers’ of Sam’s organs.  Sam tried to repress a shudder at the thought of that life.

 

            “Electric kettle’s off, and you don’t have a real one, so you’ll have to settle for canned,” Crowley said, tossing Sam a can of iced tea and a medicine bottle.

 

            “Biscuits?” Sam laughed, shaking two of the painkillers into his palm and swallowing them with a slug of tea. Crowley shrugged as he sat in Sam’s favorite chair.  Sam finished the tea in three big gulps and tossed the can aside, going back to working his jeans up his legs, “So, why are you here?”

 

            “Well, that is a bit of a tale,” at Sam’s bitch face, Crowley relented, “A little birdie gave me just enough warning to get out of my apartment before Ketchup and Eddie Munster came calling, which I assume was right after you were…ahem, secured, shall we say,” Crowley looked over at Sam’s light laughter, “I was quite cross, you know!  I’m no one’s second fiddle,” Crowley huffed.  “As I was saying, I hid out in an empty flat until I could make my way up here last night.  I stopped off briefly at my flat,” here Crowley’s voice became choked and wet, “to check on Juliette, you see. But, um she was…she was…”

 

            “Dead?” Sam asked softly.

 

            “ _The bastards killed my bloody dog_!!” Crowley dissolved in tears and Sam let him have his moment as he worked on getting his jeans over his ass and fastened up.  Once Crowley had wound down, he sniffled and looked over at Sam, “I came here to wait for the power outage.” He straightened his tie and smoothed his suit down, “Then of course, I was coming to find you.”

 

            “Of course,” Sam repeated, not entirely sure Crowley would have risked the time it would have taken to find him.  But the pain killers were kicking in and he was feeling pretty okay with everything.  He smiled as he laced up his boots.  Crowley helped him stand, but he pushed the shorter man away when he tried to help Sam to the door.

 

            “At least it’s mostly over, we can get to the rendezvous before lunch, I believe,” Crowley rattled as he gathered his bag and keys and followed Sam out the door.

 

            “You go ahead,” Sam said as they headed for the stairwell, “I forgot something upstairs.”

 

            “You _forgot_ -Sam, there is nothing upstairs that we can’t find elsewhere!”

 

            They entered the stairwell and Crowley tried to lead him down, but Sam stood looking up, “Yeah, there is.”

 

            “Moose, it’s _twenty-six_ more flights!”

 

            “I have a Dick to kill.”  Sam started up the stairs, one step at a time.  He smiled back at Crowley, “See ya later, Crowley.”  Crowley shook his head and stomped down the stairs muttering about ‘bloody martyrs’ and how he was the one who lost his best friend.

 

 

 

            Sam was so abysmally sick of being in this bare, gray stairwell that, by the time the emergency lights started to give up the ghost around the twenty-ninth floor, he was glad for the blessed darkness.  The phantom sounds of distant gunfire, shouting, the shuffling of feet on the stairs below him, all these he ignored.  His focus was making it up to the top floor, the executive offices.  Roman never left his office in an emergency, Sam just wondered if his guards would still be there or if Roman would be alone with Edgar.

 

            The door for the thirtieth floor required a key card to open, but with the power off, the door swung open easily.  Sam limped past the slanting sunlight pouring in from glass offices along the outer wall because the electric blinds had never darkened the windows.  The reception area of Dick’s office suite was empty, Lilith run off with all the other rats, so Sam looked through her desk.  He pried open a locked bottom drawer with a wicked-looking letter opener, which he stuck in his back pocket, and was shocked to discover the lady pistol he was hoping to find was, in reality, a .357 Magnum. “So, Lilith thought she was a badass,” he muttered as he checked the chamber and found it loaded.  Sam dry-swallowed two more pills and shoved the bottle back in his pocket, holding the gun in his right hand and made his way to Dick’s office.

 

            “Sam.”  Brady was walking out of the short hallway to the bathroom.  Sam turned slowly to face him.  Brady spread his hands and smiled winningly.

 

            “You know, if you had let me in on your plan, we could have taken this whole operation over-“ Sam took the two steps to reach Brady in the blink of an eye and buried the letter opener in the smiley bastard’s liver, twisting as he pushed his chest into Brady’s.

 

            “You should have known better than to bring me here,” Sam hissed at Brady’s shocked face.  Blood burbled up from Brady’s mouth as Sam wrenched the letter opener up viciously, slicing through lung and lodging the silver blade in Brady’s floating rib.

 

            Sam yanked the letter opener free and stepped away, letting Brady’s body tumble to the floor, sparing a single glance at the man who had introduced him to Jessica and stood up with him at their wedding, the man he had called ‘best friend’ for the last decade.

 

            As soon as he opened the door and spotted Edgar coming at him from over to the right, Sam lifted the gun and put a bullet through the man’s skull.  Blood, brains, and shards of bone rained down on the high-gloss teak flooring and Edgar’s headless corpse dropped.  Sam took a few more steps and found Roman standing where he had been two days ago, staring out the window behind his desk, chin cradled in his forefinger and chin.

 

            He turned to glance briefly at the mess left of Edgar before turning back to the window, “That was rather melodramatic, don’t you think?”

 

            Sam stood in front of the desk, gun aimed at Roman’s head, “I think it was just the right amount of drama.”

 

            “What, exactly, did you think was going to happen, here, Sam?”

 

            “What?”

 

            “Oh, no, I mean _after_ you kill me.”

 

            “I don’t know what-“

 

            “Ah see, and therein lies your fatal flaw.  Men like you never see the gray forest for the black and white trees.  It took men like me to build the Great Wall of China. I built the pyramids.  Men like me conquered the heathen hordes and brought civilization to the wilds.  Men like you let it all fall to ruin. All because you can’t see the world as it is: nothing but shades of gray. Because you can’t see past the next starving child, the next repressed minority. You have no _vision_ , too blinded by your own bleeding heart. But your most damning weakness is not being able to _think past you goal_.  You see, Sam, what I did here?  All this, this was not the goal.  The goal is something I moved just before I reached it, every time, so I was always reaching, always striving, always working toward something… _more._   You’ve simply left yourself nowhere to go from here.”  Roman’s smile was manic, but his eyes were those of a shark, depthless and empty. “So, I ask you, what do you plan to do now that you’ve conquered the _Big Bad_?

 

            “Sheesh, he sure likes the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he, Sambino?” Sam’s scowl dissolved into shock as he turned around slowly.

 

            A sob escaped Sam’s throat at the sight of Gabriel, standing not three feet away, blood on his forehead and smeared all over his jacket, but _alive_. Sam took one step towards him and suddenly Gabe was in his arms and climbing up Sam, wrapping his legs around Sam’s hips.  Sam stumbled, but gripped him as hard as he could, maybe hurting himself badly. Didn’t matter, he was finally kissing Gabe, something he never thought he’d do again.  Gabe broke off laughing and begging for air and Sam staggered under the pain of his incision, his ass slamming into Roman’s desk as Gabe slid down his chest.

 

            “How…mph…Gabe…oh, God…I thought…I thought…he said…”

 

            Gabriel paused in his attack on Sam’s lips, “Said what? I was dead or something?” Sam nodded, gulping visibly, “Well, his name _is_ Dick, what’d you expect?” Roman shrugged when Sam cut his eyes over to the man who was trying to slink along the window.

 

            “Personally, I would have gone with ‘Rich’, but that’s just me.  What do ya think, Cas?”

 

            “ ** _Dean??!!_** ” Sam cried, his fingers going even tighter on Gabe’s forearms.  Gabe pulled away, taking the Magnum with him.

 

            Dean opened his arms and Sam ran to him, scooping up his big brother and burying his nose in Dean’s sweaty neck, breathing in the familiar scents of leather and engine grease that had clung to Dean since they were young.  Dean let Sam cry into his shoulder a moment, swiping his tears off his own cheeks surreptitiously.  Gabe caught the motion and grinned over at Cas, who shook his head fondly and smiled.

 

            “Alright, alright, lemme down, Gigantor!” Dean groused good-naturedly.  Holding Sam at arm’s length, he got his first good look at his little brother, who looked like he’d done twelve rounds with a meat grinder, “Damn, Sammy, you look like shit!” he laughed.

 

            Sam chuckled, wincing slightly, “You don’t even know the half of it, man!  I can’t believe…Jesus, Dean!”

 

            “I know, it’s a miracle, you’ve never been happier to see anyone in your life, blah, blah, blah,” that earned him a bitch face and Dean had never been happier to see anyone in his life, so it was worth it.  “What’re we doing with this piece of shit?” Dean motioned at Roman, who was glaring at Gabriel as the shorter man held the gun on him.

 

            “Well, I, uh, I came up here to kill him for killing Gabe, but Gabe is…” Sam stared at Gabe lovingly.

 

            “Is he looking at me all sappy-like, Dean-O?” Gabriel asked without looking away from Roman.

 

            “Yup, pretty sappy is our little Samantha,” Dean agreed, grinning.  He and Cas rounded the desk, Cas scooping up an antique-looking knife as they passed.

 

            “We got this, Gabe,” Cas told him and passed the knife to Dean.

 

            Cas took up a position behind the Senator as Dean circled around to confront the man.  Dean tapped the knife on his thumb, telling Cas conversationally, “This is a nice knife.”

 

            “It looks like Pre-World War I era Romanian,” Cas answered. 

 

            “What should we do with this asshole?” Dean asked calmly.

 

            “There’s really no point in killing me now, is there?” Dick asked in his best politician voice, “You’ve successfully dismantled everything I built here.  I hardly have the resources or people behind me to try again.  Gabriel and Sam are alive.  Hell, we never even tracked down that weasel Crowley! So,” he smiled, “you win.”

 

            “Yeah, but see, here’s the thing.  Man I killed downstairs said he took Sam’s kidney and he looks all kinds a fucked up besides.  I don’t give a shit about Crowley, but Charlie and Gabriel been tellin’ me _all_ the messed-up shit you people been doing and, well,” he nodded at Cas, “I’m kinda a sore winner.” Cas grabbed Roman’s hair and pulled his head back just as Dean plunged the knife through the man’s neck, it’s tip dripping blood where it stuck out.

 

            Roman gawped, hands scrambling at the knife, and slid down the window as his life blood poured out the hole in his neck.  Cas came up and grasped Dean’s hand, leading him back over to his brother and Gabriel.

 

            “They really take your kidney, Sammy?” Dean asked.

 

            “Uh, yeah,” Sam looked down at Gabe’s concerned face, “um, the left one.”

 

            Dean tsked, “That’s a damn shame, man, seein’ as how all the whiskey’s free now.  Oh well, more for me, I guess,” Dean and Cas started walking out the office, “Bitch!” he called back.

 

            “Hey, my liver still works fine, Jerk!” Sam called after them, leaning on Gabe as they shambled out of the office.

 

 

 

            The first people Dean saw when they finally came in through the garage entrance were two big brutes, both with blood smeared on their hands and some on their clothes.  Dean rushed the taller of the two, easily surprising the man and flipping him.  The man ended up on his ass, Dean’s knife at his throat.

 

            Cas held his buddy against the nearest wall with a gun trained on the dude’s junk.  Dean addressed Son-To-Be-A-Nutless-Wonder, “We’re lookin’ for my brother.  Tall guy, floppy brown hair, goes by the name of Sam.”  The two guys share a significant look.

 

            “W-we were just doin’ wh-what we were to-told,” the guy on the floor stammered.  Dean slit his throat in one smooth motion, never taking his eyes off Nutless.

 

            “You got a better answer for me, Bubba?” he asked as he calmly wiped blood off his knife and walked to stand behind Cas.

 

            “Third floor down, take the first right, last cell in the room, ah-ah shit!” The guy’s eyes went wild with panic as Cas shoved the gun up farther into his crotch, “Uh-uh, wait! He’s alive! He was breathin’! He’s not even in the cell, just sittin’ in front of it! I just…it was dark, and-and I couldn’t carry him out by myself!”

 

            “Show us,” Dean said, pointing at the door to B1 with his chin, sheathing his knife and pulling his Colt, “You better hope he’s still breathin’.”

 

            Cas turned the taller man and moved the gun to aim directly up the guy’s ass, shoving the barrel in deep enough to lodge the tip between his cheeks. When the guy froze, Cas leaned in and growled, “Move.”  Dean filed the interested twitch his dick gave away for later as they followed Nutless into the stairwell.

 

            An older guy was coming up the stairs and Dean shot him between the eyes before he could raise the sawed-off past his waist.  The shot was deafening in the stairwell, but it blocked out Nutless’ sniveling, so that was okay.  They hit the third and last landing without any more trouble and Cas pushed Nutless into the dark corridor beyond the door.

 

            The guy led them to the right, keeping a hand on the wall to find the way.  The first door on the right had a spill of light flooding out under it and Dean put his hand on Cas’ shoulder to stop him.  Cas turned a bit and Dean put his forefinger up to silence him.  Cas hissed something in Nutless’ ear and Dean put his ear to the door.  His ears were still ringing from the gunshot in on the stairs, but he heard at least two men talking about a cooler and ice.  Dean made a motion toward the door then pointed at himself and Cas, making a shooing gesture toward Nutless.  Cas nodded and hissed something else in the guy’s ear.  Cas moved to the side of the door frame and Nutless took off back the way they’d come.  Cas nodded at Dean again and Dean kicked the door open.

 

            Dean shot the blonde guy with the Rickie Rich hair before the door had time to swing back around.  Moving low and fast, he put the door to his back and covered the other two men, who were standing over a Mini Igloo on either side of a desk, a lantern on the desk the only source of light.  Cas came in just as Dean had, moving around to disarm the younger man.  He stepped back and covered them while Dean did a quick search for more weapons.

 

            “Sam Winchester,” Dean demanded.

 

            “What about him?” the older guy sounded almost bored.  The younger guy just seethed silently, his face red with anger, his nostrils flaring.

 

            “ _Where is he_?!” Dean screamed.

 

            “How would I know? Did you check cold storage?” Dean headbutted Old Dude.  Young Dude twitched toward them and Cas slammed him into the cabinet against the wall, his gun under the guy’s chin.

 

            Dean caught a glimpse of the bloody lump of _something_ in the open cooler and put his gun to Old Dude’s forehead, “What’s in the box?”

 

            Old Dude glared up at Dean from where he’d gone down on one knee behind the desk, “Sam’s kidney.  It was going to be for Jacob but you shot him so-“ Dean shot the man between the eyes.  Young Dude’s roar of fury was cut off when Cas blew the top of his head off.  Cas stepped back, wiping the spray of blood off his face with his sleeve.  He grabbed the lantern and Dean led him back out to the hallway.

 

            The lantern lit the smears of blood on the floor and wall as they progressively got lower and darker.  Dean’s heart hammered in his chest until they spotted the bloody footprint, really half a footprint, just the toes and ball of the foot, outside the door to the cells.  It was pointing the other way and Dean and Cas turned in the same moment to reexamine the path of blood.  Cas looked at Dean and opened the door.  They followed the half-print all the way back to the last door in the room, where a few swirls and smudges of blood made it obvious Sam had crawled out of the room and stood up in the hallway, going God-knew-where.

 

            Cas knelt down and ran a finger through the biggest drop of blood, “It’s still tacky.  He didn’t leave too long ago.”

 

            Dean grabbed his radio from his belt, “Gabe, you copy?”

 

            “Hey, Dean-O, long time no see!” Gabriel’s voice came back full of false cheer.

 

            “We found where they had Sam, looks like he took off, probably headed up and out, over.”

 

            “Um, okay? No one saw him leave and we have all the doors covered so, maybe his apartment?”

 

            Dean fidgeted as he waited for Gabe to continue.

 

            “Oh, um…over.”  Cas rolled his eyes and reloaded his gun and Dean’s.

 

            “Where is it, Gabriel?  Over,” Dean said in his best my-patience-is-as-thin-as-tissue-paper-but-I’m-trying-really-hard-here voice.

 

            “Oh, fourteenth floor, 1411, in the north corner of the building, but I’m on the tenth, so I’ll probabl-“ Gabe’s voice cut out with a thud.

 

            “Gabriel? Did you drop the radio?” Dean and Cas stared at the radio in Dean’s hand as a woman’s voice came over it in a fit of static.

 

            “Gabriel is not available at the moment, perhaps you’d like to leave the building?” Cas mouthed ‘Naomi?’ at Dean and Dean shrugged. “Oh, yes, over and out.”

 

            “ _Sonuvabitch_!”

 

 

 

            Dick Roman was nothing if not efficient in his bureaucratic pretension.  All the signs that would normally guide people to their pediatrist’s or shrink’s offices had been changed out with ones for ‘Evaluation’ and ‘Intake’.  Dean and Cas followed the ones for ‘Training’ they found on the tenth floor.  Dean peered into the window running the length of the door frame and saw nobody in the waiting area.  He turned the knob quietly and Cas slipped in, covering the big check-in window as Dean came in to cover the one door out of the waiting room.  A quick peek in the check-in window proved it to be empty and they slid into the hallway behind the door soundlessly.  The rooms had obviously been for a dental suite, but were now used for an even worse form of torture.  Dean and Cas made their way past empty room after empty room, each one holding horrors worse than the last, until they came to a big oak door with a placard next to it that read “Naomi Walsh-Head Trainer”.  Dean smiled at that and made the universal sign for ‘blowjob’ at Cas.  Cas just tipped his head in confusion, then rolled his eyes when Dean waved him off.  Cas had taken to Dean’s attempts to educate him on raiding an enemy stronghold like a duck to water, so their entrance into Naomi’s office was as professional as any Dean had ever seen. 

 

            Dean swept the left side of the room, “Don’t move,” he growled at the woman sitting comfortably behind a large desk.  She simply glared back at him.

 

            “Dean,” Cas warned.  Dean risked a glance over to the right-hand side of the room.  Cas stood to the far side of Gabriel, who was tied to a chair in the middle of the room.  A prissy-looking guy held a gun to Gabriel’s head, Cas’ gun not five inches from his own.

 

            “I wouldn’t if I were you,” the man’s British accent made Dean think of Harry Potter, for some reason, “Your friend here would regret any-“ the front of the guy’s head exploded and sprayed Gabriel with blood and bone when Cas pulled the trigger.

 

            The woman gasped and began to stand.  Dean was a little shocked by Cas’ ruthlessness, but not enough to let the woman get her feet under herself.  He pointed his gun at her head and she sat back, flat murder in her eyes.  Cas untied Gabriel and helped him wipe most of the blood off his face so he could at least open his eyes.

 

            “That was so Tarantino, Cas,” Gabe smiled.

 

            “Who did I shoot?” Cas asked, voice holding steady despite the slight tremor running through his body.

 

            “Arthur Ketch, her right-hand man,” Gabriel nodded at the woman.

 

            “Naomi, I guess?” Dean asked.

 

            “Who are you people?” she hissed, eyes narrowed at Cas.

 

            “Dean Winchester, appalled to meetcha,” Dean drawled.  Naomi’s head whipped around to look at him incredulously.  “Yeah, Sam’s my brother.”

 

            “Brother?” she smirked, “Oh, Dr. Styne will be most interested to meet _you_.” She honest-to-God steepled her fingers under her chin, like some Bond super villain.

 

            “Old dude? Likes to steal internal organs?” At her widened eyes, Dean grinned, “Been there, killed that, lady.”  His grin only grew at her shocked face.  “It’s all over for you people.  Didn’t you get the memo?  Here, let me CC you on it,” Dean shot her in the throat, then twice in the chest.  He turned to Gabriel and Cas, “1411, ya said?”

 

 

 

            Dean couldn’t help his instant dislike of Crowley, but he took solace in Cas’ obvious hatred for the smarmy Brit.  Sam had filled him in on the last few months, from Brady bringing him to San Francisco to forming an alliance with Crowley to bring the whole works down and all the preparations for the rendezvous he directed them to.  After gathering the rest of their group together in front of Roman’s headquarters, they’d split into different vehicles, all following Dean’s new Escalade, formerly belonging to Dick and heavily armored by his security team.

 

            Crowley was presently strutting around the McMansion they had outfitted as a semi-permanent layover, expounding on all the amenities he’d been able to secure.  Sam turned to Dean, talking over Crowley’s crowing, “Where to now?”

 

            Dean looked over at Cas, who shrugged and wondered off in search of the hot shower Crowley had mentioned.  Dean turned back to his brother, “Well, first off, I think here’s as good a place as any, until you’re healed up enough to travel.  Then, I don’t know, Oregon was nice?”  Sam nodded, looking exhausted in his relief.

 

            “What? Not gonna argue to stay in Cali?” Dean teased.

 

            “No,” Sam muttered, “Wherever you want to go, I’m with you, Dean.” Sam turned his patented puppy dog eyes on Dean.

 

            “Alright, ya big sap, enough with the chick-flick moment,” Dean laughed, embarrassed.  “Uh, Gabe, you take good care of him, ya hear?” Gabriel just nodded, tucking himself against Sam’s good side.  “I’m, um, gonna go find Cas.  See you guys in the morning?”  Dean made his exit as quickly as possible.  He walked through the overly-elaborate décor of a hallway until he found Cas outside an equally-elaborate bathroom.  Cas opened his arms and Dean collapsed into him, sobbing quietly into his shoulder, all the tension and grief that had followed him from Kansas flowing out of him as he broke down, until he was empty of anything but joy and hope for the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said, smut coming up.
> 
> One more chapter, a denouement for this AU.


End file.
